Denali! But no mountain :(

    On Wednesday the 25th my dad, my grandma and I went to Denali National Park, which is home to the tallest mountain in North America, Mount McKinley or just Denali. Denali is Athabaskan for "the high one". Though Denali is only 20,320 ft high compared to Mount Everest's 29,029, Denali has a larger bulk and rise.

    The day we went to Denali National Park was a very beautiful day compared to the normal rainy and overcast days of August and September up here. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the mountain. Denali is said to make its own weather; most of the time she chooses to be covered by clouds most of the time.
    When we got to the park the first thing we saw were a bunch of fliers up with a picture of a man about 23 who went missing in the park. See, in Canada and Alaska, you can camp anywhere you want. So Denali is very popular because you can hike in, walk all day, then set up camp where ever you feel is good. Then you can wake up the next morning and do the same thing. So its pretty cool.  But the not so cool part is that there is lots of wildlife in the park that dont like being snuck up on by humans, namely grizzly bears. Most of the time grizzlies wont attack humans but if they dont hear you coming or you come between them and their cubs, they will kill people. This time of year is also dangerous because the salmon are spawning so grizzlies are everywhere looking for fish. So it was pretty worrisome that this man was missing for 4 days.
     We did see lots of wildlife on our bus tour though! Normally seeing one or two animals is pretty cool because they have so much room to roam around that they dont always stay close enough to the road. But right off the bat we saw a big moose bull:

It was awesome! Pretty soon he'll go into rut so he'll stop eating and dig a big hole to pee in so when he finally wins a mate, he's nice and slim and she can roll in his pee pit. Isnt that romantic? Aww...

So after that we saw some caribou and some Dall sheep but from a great distance. As we went out we saw lots of hikers and photographers. The nice thing about the park was that you pay for a bus ticket (around $30) then you travel into the park and you can get off at any stop you want and hike a round for a while, spend the night like I mentioned above, and then hop on the next bus out of there. Its pretty cool and something that people should do if they come up here.

So after we saw the moose and the caribou and the Dall sheep, we finally saw grizzlies! It was a sow and two cubs. Here's their pics:

No, Im actually just kidding. We really did see bears, but they were fishing and all you could see was brown spots in my pics. So I stole this picture from google images to make up for my incompetence.

So after we saw the grizzlies our 4 hr bus ride was almost to our destination. We got to see lots of pretty sights:

                                         

It was a very pretty day. So on our way back home we were kind of falling asleep cuz we had to leave Fairbanks at 4 to get there by 7. But all of a sudden people were yelling "Stop!" which is what were suppose to do when we see wildlife. We looked around and sitting maybe 100 yds off the road were Dall Sheep! Which is very rare because they like to be on top of the mountains and we were not on top!

They were all good sized rams too. One photographer was having a fit trying to get down close to them but there was kind of a big drop off right in front of him and i felt bad for him.

 After that was saw more caribou, but again far out and none of them were anything spectacular. So when the driver stopped the bus and said "Theres another caribou bull" I didnt get too excited because he was prob far out again. But he wasnt! He was on his way to a female who was pretty far out but he was pretty close to the road! And he was huge!

Check that out!

And after that we saw a marmot, which is very cute:

                           

They are about a foot long and I want one.

So that was the end of our Denali Venture. We got to see lots of wildlife and the next day it was clear enough to see the mountain on our way to Tanana to my uncle's cabin. So that was cool too.